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I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking this thing up, though I do wish there were even a bit more information on that portrait ‘Touch’ slider BB is supposedly working on.

When it comes to horse drawn carriages vs. automobiles, I’m not too sure I buy the argument that full-on touch-only experiences are similarly positioned as that immediate and ineluctable next step. We’re on the verge of wearable computing, multiple items slicing and dicing daily tasks and flowing into our use-cases in ways that single, powerful items previously have not been able to. Google Glass, iWatches, and everything else coming will once again change what people consider The Norm as far as daily-use tech goes. Add to that the greater comfort we are building as tech consumers with appreciating our own need for Comfort Itself—Samsung’s play at scrolling via eye-movement, Google Now’s soon-to-be greater integration into your life, Leap Motion Anything Just Let Me Buy It Already.

Phones as they exist now—all slates, all the time—aren’t automobiles, not exactly. They’re just another type of carriage. When it comes to trends, we forget that it was the interface that drew everyone to the iPhone in the first place, an interface with a fidelity that was clearly in the offing with products like SPB Pocket Shell and the like that gave users the option of using thumbs coupled with larger program buttons.

Soon, you’ll be able to graft Angry Birds over whatever you are spying while wearing your Google Glass, and soon, you’ll be able to speak into your Dick Tracey Watch and have a chat or SMS type text sent to all your friends without typing at all. In that world, will be claim that large slate phones no longer have use? That they are outdated tech in a modern world? That they are the automobiles to our hovercraft?

Of course not, it will all come down to comfort.

I hope this product does well enough to spark some competition in the phone arena. The same phones come out again and again, maybe some have rounded edges, maybe they don’t; maybe some are 4 inches, maybe some are 5; maybe some have a power button at the top, maybe some have it off to the side: it doesn’t matter, no one seems to notice they have been buying the same product archetype for the last 6 years.

I must be old because I still for the life of me have no desire at all to watch netflix in any serious capacity on my mobile phone. It seems silly to me. It seems silly to have to enlarge the phone to make netflix worthwhile, and it seems silly to me that not being netflix capable is a mark against a modern phone these days. You run into a weird situation where there is this worthless arms race over which camp can do the most trivial of things, and we all buy right into it. BB doesn’t have a music service? Boo. BB does have a music service, but it’s laughably behind its peers? Boo.

I’m not meaning to defend BB at all here. I will never argue for a company. I am arguing for us as consumers for greater choice. Everyone wants the homeruns and that is all they focus on, so what 80% of the people will buy is all that will be created, even if those 80% have no idea that they have no idea what they want. Yes, they buy something shiny, something captivating, and that’s great, but if they are controlling the market while having no idea what the market is actually about—just what makes them ‘feel’ a certain way—then it leaves everyone else in the dust. We’re the old guard who gets told to get with the times, get with touch screen phones that are 7 inches in your pocket, when no one seems to realize that those phones are on the doorstep of being phased out too in favor of wearable computing.

The review here is fine imo. This isn’t about the review, the Q10 was always going to be a niche product. My issue though is with the whys of that niche and expectations we have. If Apple released a keyboard iPhone side by side with it’s original, we would be using keyboarded phones to this day. Demand is created by exciting products. So when people repeat this mantra of ‘there is no demand for keyboard phones’, it makes me flip because it’s such a silly syllogism—it’s just easier for companies to make slate phones, then those same companies tell you, the consumer, that you don’t want keyboard phones anyway, you just want another slate which is so very different than any other slate being offered by any other company because you can play Angry Birds so much better on it.

The entire market is controlled by this notion that phones are consumption and entertainment devices, and anything that runs counter to that is pushed to the back. I’m all for people doing what they want on a phone or using any piece of tech. That’s cool to me. What I hate is how the very definition of a phone has been warped to suit big business in their pursuit of increased profits, and how no one seems to give a fuck, let alone in the tech review world.

When the show runners at Google themselves lament touch screen only devices as ‘emasculating’ and unpleasant, you would think people would start catching on.

I just want more choice in the mobile landscape. I’m also tired of being told what will work and what wont by people who didn’t even use smartphones back when they were called pdaphones in the first place, and have no idea what they are capable of beyond playing the latest rehash 1990s flash game, or being a showcase for some ivy league wonder to sell you his or her latest ‘here is how to be even lazier, you chucklefucks’ app for 9.99 in the hopes of having her company absorb by InstaTwitUberGramBler for a cold 50 mill.

23 days ago on BlackBerry Q10 review: revenge of the keyboard 11 replies 23 recommends